A success soaked in sweat will be among Nemo's sweetest
Nemo Rangers's Luke Connolly takes a shot on goal
Nemo don’t like when their status is challenged or called into question. They don’t like it one bit.
Arriving into Páirc Uí Chaoimh yesterday, this Nemo team had won three of the last five Cork football tites. The Barrs had won the other two. It meant yesterday’s clash was thus billed - and rightly so - as the deciding battle for local supremacy.
After Nemo had walked said battle, goalkeeper Micheál Aodh Martin told this writer how he and his teammates felt they didn’t get due recognition for their 2017, ‘19, and ‘20 county wins.
Neither did they particularly like how the pre-final conversation had centred on the Barrs and how Nemo would have to do this and do that to live with the reigning champions, never mind go and beat them.
Yesterday’s performance means this Nemo team will never again be overlooked. They’ll never again not receive due recognition.
We could start with Luke Connolly’s annihilation of a poorly arranged Barrs defence. Or with Conor Horgan crowning an excellent campaign with three points from play and the lobbed goal that left Nemo pretty much uncatchable early in the second period.
But this Nemo performance was not defined by silkiness. This was a Nemo performance of sustained hard work. Quite literally from first whistle to last.
Right from the throw-in the Barrs sought to get Steven Sherlock involved. Possession was sprayed in the direction of the Blues talisman in front of the North Stand. Cork teammate and Nemo corner-back Kevin O’Donovan was out front by a couple of paces to intercept. A couple of passes later and Ronan Dalton kicked Nemo’s opener inside 37 seconds.
Fast forward to the fourth minute of second-half injury time and Nemo’s work-rate is still roaring. Eoin McGreevey is added to the long list of Barrs players to be encircled and stripped of possession.
This latest and last turnover ends with sub Kieran O’Sullivan kicking the insurance score to send Nemo across the finish line four in front.
In between were countless examples of Barrs players either running into or getting caught up in heavy Nemo traffic. Like oil covering water, black shirts spent the afternoon hemming in and smothering the men in blue.
On 17 minutes, Enda Dennehy found himself being security-checked by Nemo trio Ciaran McCartan, Stephen Cronin, and Alan O’Donovan. Treating the football as some sort of contraband, they ripped it clean from Dennehy. The play concluded with Conor Horgan landing his third and Nemo’s fifth-in-a-row to move the men from Trabeg 0-7 to 0-3 clear.
Where Nemo were insatiable in going about their business, the Barrs were unusually indecisive. The directness that defined their passage back to the final had been left on the Togher training field.
Shortly after Horgan’s third arrived a Steven Sherlock free to reduce the gap to three. Shortly after that arrived the opening period’s key moment. A double Barrs goal chance. It was met with a Micheál Aodh Martin double save.
Colin Lyons denied first, then Sherlock. The latter missed the resulting ‘45. Further sense that this was not going to be the Barrs’ day.
Nemo went promptly down the field and won a free, which Luke converted. They could have poured additional salt on those missed Barrs goal chances when Luke played in Mark Cronin. John Kerins to the rescue, the goalkeeper repelling the shot.
The half finished with yet another Barrs player turning over possession and yet another Connolly point (free).
Ahead by 0-9 to 0-4 turning around for the second period, the underdogs pulled further clear on 34 minutes. A stray John Kerins restart was collected by Conor Horgan who lobbed the backpedalling ‘keeper.
Ronan Dalton’s second and a Connolly skyscraper left the scoreboard reading 1-13 to 0-5 on 40 minutes. A difference of 11 points. Nobody - nobody - had seen this coming.
Led by Ian Maguire (the one man in blue who shone throughout), the Barrs belatedly decided they’d try and make a go of retaining their county title. Brian Hayes and Billy Hennessy goals on 41 and 51 minutes were the headline acts in a comeback effort that had them within three, 1-15 to 2-9, on 57 minutes.
No closer did they get. No half-decent equalising goal chance did they create. Bluntness made an unwelcome return to their approach play.
Yesterday was 1993 all over again. Nemo didn’t just stop a first Barrs double in 40 years, they killed it stone dead.
In the 100th year of their existence and 50 years on from their maiden county title, Nemo’s status as Cork football’s dominant force is as strong as ever.
County final win number 23 will go down as one of the sweetest and satisfying.
L Connolly (0-8, 0-5 frees); C Horgan (1-3); R Dalton (0-2); K O’Donovan, B O’Driscoll, K O’Sullivan (0-1 each).
S Sherlock (0-6, 0-1 free); B Hayes, B Hennessy (1-0 each); B O’Connor, E McGreevey, I Maguire (0-1 each).
MA Martin; K O’Donovan, K Fulignati, K Histon; C McCartan, B Murphy, S Cronin; B Cripps, A O’Donovan; C Horgan, R Dalton, J Horgan; M Cronin, B O’Driscoll, L Connolly.
P Kerrigan for Dalton (47 mins); L Horgan for J Horgan, C Dalton for C Horgan (both 54); K O’Sullivan for Fulignati (56); C O’Donovan for Cripps (60).
J Kerins; A O’Connor, S Ryan, B Hennessy; C Lyons, J Burns, C Scully; I Maguire, E Comyns; E McGreevey, B Hayes, E Dennehy; C Myers Murray, E Twomey, S Sherlock.
B O’Connor for Twomey (HT); D Quinn for Comyns (32 mins); C Dennehy for Myers Murray (44); A Lyne for Dennehy (55).
A Long (Argideen Rangers).
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